Drawing the Line

PoliStat | Oct. 25, 2018, 8:56 a.m.

North Carolina has recently modified its district lines to decrease gerrymandering. The problem: it didn't work.


After every decennial census, the state governor and legislature are responsible for congressional redistricting based on the collected data. Ideally, districts will be compact and group communities that share common interests and demographic characteristics; as a whole, the districts in a state should not favor one party over another. However, the Constitution does not specify any restrictions or requirements to redistricting which gives the particular political party in control of the state government the freedom to manipulate the boundaries of electoral districts to its own favor, often known as gerrymandering.


Gerrymandering leads to extremely partisan congressional districts and is unfortunately very prevalent across the United States, at different degrees. For example, while dividing a state with five congressional districts horizontally may result in three Republican districts and two Democratic districts, dividing the same state vertically may yield two Republican districts and three Democratic districts instead.


(Courtesy of The Washington Post)

The Washington Post reveals differences in district results as a result of extreme gerrymandering.


In some instances, extreme cases of gerrymandering are taken to the Supreme Court and modifications to district lines are enacted prior to the end of the typical ten year period. This actually recently occurred in the heavily gerrymandered state of North Carolina in 2014.


In fact, North Carolina's 12th Congressional District was often referred to as the most gerrymandered district in America, with long and narrow borders that stretch a 2-hour drive from Charlotte to Durham. The 1st District had a similar reputation. However, in February 2016, both districts were redrawn after a federal court ruled that lines seemed to intentionally concentrate African American voters, limiting their influence. Now, African Americans no longer account for the majority of registered voters like they once did in NC-12 and the district is still more compact.


(Courtesy of Daily Kos Elections)

Daily Kos Elections compares the 2014 and 2016 congressional maps, before and after the 2016 redistricting, respectively.


With these new district lines, our model, the ORACLE, predicts that a majority of the Republican candidates in Republican districts (i.e. 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th) winning a lower percentage of the vote in juxtaposition to the results of the last midterm elections. While this may be attributed to the “blue” wave this year, it is interesting to note that two of the three Democratic districts (i.e. 1st, 4th, and 12th) winning a lower percentage in comparison to the last midterm elections. This strongly indicates that the 2016 redistricting did reduce bipartisanship in the districts of North Carolina.

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The predictions of our model, the ORACLE, in comparison with the midterm congressional results from 2014.


Despite these changes which have solved the racial issue discerned by the courts, the new boundaries have ultimately had little impact on the outcomes of the congressional elections. Most elections are still "safe" races, meaning that they are predictably and consistently Democratic or Republican. Despite Republicans dominating at the congressional level, Republican presidential candidates are only winning the states by a small margin.


In the 2016 presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump won the state with a leeway of 3.67%. In the 2012 presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won the state by only 2.04%. These minimal margins, in addition to data from voter registration, strongly suggest that North Carolina is a purple state, meaning it is approximately 50% Democratic and 50% Republican.


2018 is a competitive election year, and Democrats should have the opportunity to pick up congressional seats. However, according to our model, the ORACLE, 10 out of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts are still Republican-leaning, the same 10 districts that were Republican in the 2014 congressional districts before the redrawing. Because the presidential and congressional results are drastically different, the two factors reveal that the map-drawing distorts the electoral outcomes of the ballot.


(Courtesy of Azavea)

Data analytics company Azavea calculates a 20.3% efficiency gap advantage for Republicans, revealing a heavy partisan bias with a 3 seat advantage.


Overall, although North Carolina redrew their district lines in 2016 upon court mandate, the disparate difference in district and state level ballot results indicate that there was little improvement in reducing extreme partisanship at the district level, and from our predictions, gerrymandering is still very likely to impact the 2018 midterm election results.


ML, RP, MX


Sources:


Barnes, R. (2018, June 18). Efforts to limit partisan gerrymandering falter at Supreme Court. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-sidesteps-decision-on-partisan-gerrymandering/2018/06/18/c909bf26-7303-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?utm_term=.8c560f29b74d


Blau, M. (2016, October 19). Drawing the line on the most gerrymandered district in America. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/19/gerrymandering-supreme-court-us-election-north-carolina


Ingraham, C. (2018, March 28). How Maryland Democrats pulled off their aggressive gerrymander. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/how-maryland-democrats-pulled-off-their-aggressive-gerrymander/?utm_term=.1d299a5d9516


Liptak, A., & Blinder, A. (2018, January 18). Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks North Carolina Gerrymandering Ruling. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/politics/supreme-court-north-carolina-gerrymandering.html 


Nilsen, E. (2018, May 08). North Carolina's extreme gerrymandering could save the House Republican majority. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/8/17271766/north-carolina-gerrymandering-2018-midterms-partisan-redistricting